Place Name Index

to

Notes on the Historical Connections of Devonshire Place Names

by

R.N. Worth, F.G.S., etc.

Trans. Devon Assoc., 1878, Vol. X, pp. 276-308.

Prepared by Michael Steer

The paper was presented at the Association’s July 1878 Paignton meeting.  Although the origin of many Devonshire place names has long been forgotten, Mr Worth claims that it is often possible to establish their probable meanings through the consideration of earlier forms of the name. In his paper, some general conclusions about the nature of our county’s place names, and the way in which place names change, are proposed and examined. The names tell us not only that Devon has been in turns inhabited by men of different races, but who and what these races were. The author, Richard Nichols Worth was a geologist and historian of Plymouth. He published over 140 papers between 1869 and his death. These were mostly historical, with several published in the proceedings of local societies. Some of his scientific papers appeared in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, of which he became a fellow in 1875. The article, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. (A personal name index is given here.) Google has sponsored the digitization of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.